HALF A CENTURY AGO AND TO-DAY. 



2^ 



unless he withdrew his hand, which he, the Duke, did ! And 

 the next important occasion was the massacre of St. Bar- 

 tholomew's Day in 1572, when thousands of Protestants were- 

 ruthlessly murdered in cold blood or had to fly for their lives 

 into Geneva, Zurich and other friendly Swiss towns on the one 

 hand, or to England and Ireland on the other. We are fortunate 

 in now having the details of this foul tragedy laid bare by the 

 researches of a lioman Catliolic historian of undisputed eminence. 

 I refer to Lord Acton, late Professor of History to the 

 University of Cambridge,* because I learn there are persons so 

 ashamed of this event that they are inclined to deny that it 

 ever happened ; and from the efforts (related by Lord Acton) 

 which were made by the Catholic writers of Prance to destroy 

 all documents relating to this event, it is clear that they would 

 have gladly blotted out that record from the page of history. 

 The destruction of a million of France's most God-fearing and 

 industrious inhabitants was a loss she has never recovered, and 

 a gain to those countries who opened their doors to the refugees. 

 Itetribution was sure to follow, and has followed. Through 

 Zwingli's efforts Switzerland extended the droit d'asile to all, 

 and she henceforth followed out her mission as a neutral power. 

 It is the protection so freely given to refugees by Geneva, 

 Zurich, and other Swiss cities that brightens tlie history of the 

 gloomy reaction period towards the close of the sixteenth 

 century after the death of Calvin, and during the Marian 

 persecution refugees from England found a friendly asylum in 

 these prosperous cities.! 



Such were the scenes and impressions which presented 

 themselves during my visit to Switzerland a few weeks since, 

 and about half a century previously. I have not included the 

 beautiful City of Lausanne, which was the point of arrival and 

 de})arture for our tour ; nor the Hotel Gibbon, where the 

 historian is said to have composed his great history of the 

 Decline and Fall of the Roman Emijirc, a work which is in 

 itself a library of information regarding the times to which it 

 refers — to have done so would have unduly extended this paper. 



" The Massacre of St. Bartholomew," in The History of Freedom, bv 

 Lord Acton (1907), MacMillan and Co. The Pope Gregory XIII. on 

 hearing of the massacre, exclaimed " that it was more agreeable to him 

 than tifty victories of Lepanto, and with his cardinals attended a Te 

 Deicm in the nearest church in Kome," p. 133-4. 



t An admiiable account of tliese times will be found in the volume 

 " Switzerland " of 77ie /Stor// of the Nations, by Lina Hug and Richard 

 Stead (b^isher Unwin, 1890). Also, in The Huguenots, by S. Smiles 

 (John Murray, 1869). 



